… the … Car Allowance Rebate System … provides credits of as much as $4,500 for the purchase of a new car when turning in an older vehicle to be scrapped. Lawmakers had expected the program to generate about 250,000 vehicle sales and to have enough money to last until about Nov. 1…

… the National Automobile Dealers Association, which represents about 19,700 new car and truck dealers, came to the Michigan delegation with concerns about the $1 billion being used up, with 40,000 transactions completed and about 200,000 in the pipeline...

… The Commerce Department's initial stab at figuring out the gross domestic product (GDP) for the second quarter of 2009, came out at a 1 percent decline, which is lower than economists were predicting…

July 31, 2009: Dow 9178 (+23)

Last March I was feeling contrarian, and bet on 9,000 by November. I didn’t bet on 9,000 by July. If we continued along the course of the past month we’ll be in range of 11,000 by November.

That might help Obama get health care reform through, but, economically, it would be a very bad thing.

In the face of true financial catastrophe the US and China did a mega-mega stimulus package. No, not the trillion dollars in the official US stimulus package, but the Fed’s big moves and the sustaining effect of persistent governmental expenditures and China’s immense internal package.

That averted catastrophe, but it means, of course, that we can tip fast. We may be at the tipping point now. A spending program that was supposed to last over four months sold out in one week. (it would be crazy to renew it of course.)

The Cash for Clunker story confirms there’s a ton of money in the United States, and the American urge to spend isn’t gone. If that money pours out of people’s piggy banks we’re going to blow this bubble up real fast.